Cheap Poirot - One Two Buckle My Shoe (DVD) (Ross Devenish, Edward Bennett, Richard Spence, Peter Barber-Fleming, Andrew Piddington, Ken Grieve, John Bruce (II), Brian Farnham, Renny Rye, Andrew Grieve) Price

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Customer Reviews of Poirot - One Two Buckle My Shoe

From the Poirot Movie Collection
This has perhaps the best opening in a Poirot episode I have seen so far: slow-motion footage, plenty of superimposed images, of a (particularly malevolent) dentist being shot while little girls play hopscotch outside (the very fact that they do nothing else during the course of the film but play hopscotch makes them seem obsessive and evil)... The film itself did not disappoint. No other episode quite conjures up the feeling of clueing and detection in the books--although I am a great fan of the films, I sometimes feel that they fail to measure up to the essence of detection and mystery possessed by the books (the last two films, THE MURDER OF ROGER ACKROYD and LORD EDGWARE DIES, are examples of this). Yet in this adaptation, I was conscious of Poirot as __a mind__, as, with the assistance of Inspector Japp, he investigates murder after murder: a dentist's suicide (although the clue of the stains and the rug, also, I think, found in MURDER IN MESOPOTAMIA, was missing), his patient's death by overdose (not revealed that he was a spy / blackmailer until end, unlike book), and the death of an actress (or was somebody else the victim, as the dental records indicate?). Finally, following the titular clue of a shoe buckle, Poirot is able to accuse the murderer (watching with my family, they were able to spot the villain--one of the flaws in the series, as Christie's misdirection works perhaps better on page than on screen). The acting was superb, and new areas of the characters' lives were revealed: a shot of the Whitehaven Mansions lobby, and Inspector Japp at home in Isleworth. Unfortunately, the church service scene was not in the film, nor are Mr. Chapman and Howard Raikes to be found; and most of the spy business was missing. Yet this is still an absolutely superb film, one that any fan of Agatha Christie would do well to watch.

Drilling for crimes...
This feature-length mystery falls squarely into the "middling" range. The plot lacks propulsiveness and too many of the supporting characters are of the cardboard cutout variety (a situation not helped by some weak acting, particularly by the actor playing the would-be Black Shirt). On the other hand, David Suchet is, as per the usual, effective as the misleadingly droll Poirot: he does a fine job of revealing the dangerous qualities lurking beneath the effete exterior. Peter Blythe turns in a similarly excellent performance as a coolly evil megalomaniac. As other reviewers have noted, the score is effective, and the reconstruction of the murder scene (done twice) is also well done. Some viewers may rejoice with me at the absence of Capt. Hastings. The quality of the DVD itself is adequate, but the picture was occasionally fuzzy.